January 30, 2012

Someone noticed

For a year, here on the blog and in my books, I've been pounding on the idea that genius is a thing of the past. There is little or no creativity in American life these days. There are no great artists, song writers, movie makers, authors, etc. Creativity is dead.

Today on Hullabaloo, David Atkins/There Is No Spoon pointed to an article about this very thing. Well, hallelujah. Now that someone's finally written about it (other than me), it's official: creativity is dead. Go read the article. It's three pages; you can do it!

He misses the main thing, though. Genius is gone. You can't blame the world and business for the lack of personal innovation. That's disappeared. We used to have people popping up all over the place, like a burst of fresh air, bringing exciting new ideas and sounds and looks and world-changing projects. Now all we have is people hanging saffron fabric over parks. Genius is dead.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't think genius or creativity are dead, I think we just live in a world that isn't ready for it.

You sort of touched on the problem already... genius and creativity bring about things like "exciting new ideas and sounds and looks and world-changing projects." People don't want excitement or change right now, especially those who call the shots. Being creative or a genius at this moment is liable to get you hurt, or worse yet for the artist, ignored.

Creativity and genius aren't deceased, they're playing dead until that the bears of conservatism stop sniffing at them and move on.

writenow said...

I'm sure you're right in some respects. But I don't see how conservatives prevent a guitar-playing genius in his garage from coming up with music we'd all buy. It's not like you need the big guys behind you to get noticed these days. This isn't happening. Why? It's very weird.

Unknown said...

There's plenty of people making great music these days. Just look on YouTube. That has allowed just about anyone to share their musical talents. If you want suggestions, let me know... but I bet if you just look up a band you like and look around at the related videos on the right for a while, you'll find something obscure that you love (as well as loads of classic stuff you forgot existed).

writenow said...

I agree there's some fun music out there. Pandora told me so. But genius? I haven't seen genius for decades. (My best musical find of last year, by the way, was Nick Drake. And I found him in a sidebar on YouTube.)

It's all opinion, isn't it? There isn't a clear answer to this question.